Wasteland 2 - MCA Interview @ RPS

April 8th, 2012, 04:51

Chris Avellone has been interviewed at Rock, Paper, Shotgun about Obsidian's involvement with Wasteland 2 but also touching on some other topics - a must-read for Obsidian fans. He confirms Obsidian is interested in their own Kickstarter but they want to "learn" from the Wasteland 2 process, that they still have two teams (South Park plus pitching a previous idea to publishers). Here's a snip:

RPS: The whole “getting Black Isle back together” news story set off a chain reaction of nostalgic comments, tweets, Facebook posts, and probably a few extremely meme-able YouTube videos. Meanwhile, Baldur’s Gate is coming back via Beamdog. There’s this giant contingent of RPG fans who constantly pine for the “golden age” to return, and now they’re getting their wish. Is that a good thing, though? Or is there a risk of pushing the genre backward — looking back without moving forward?
Chris Avellone: It depends what you mean by “backwards.” I still consider a lot of innovations that occurred with Fallout 1 and Wasteland to be unmatched in today’s RPGs. I feel true innovation often gets lost beyond features that require new engine tech and the latest video card when we can achieve more interesting game mechanics in tighter constraints.
I don’t think anything involving Kickstarter would stop future RPG iteration across the major franchises in the slightest. There’s still a market for those huge budget RPGs that people want, and they’re fun to play, so no harm there. I also don’t see the harm in the industry going “backwards” and forwards – again, I think there’s a lot of gameplay elements that can be learned from working on “old school” titles that are just as applicable in current titles and can push both genres forward.

Personally, the arena outside of gaming interested me as well. My girlfriend summed it up simply by saying, “I wish they’d do a Kickstarter to resurrect Firefly.” If money’s the only object, then possibilities like that begin to come to mind, which I find very exciting. As much as people would pay for adventure games, think how many people would donate to Nathan Fillion or Joss Whedon to take back Firefly. I’d pay a LOT.

They should open their kickstarter project before the first big kickstarter game comes out, just to be safe. We don't know if the model(player's trust) will survive its first high-profile flop.

We’re still working on two projects: South Park, and a team focused on pitching our second project that we put on hold for North Carolina.

Wow, they put another project on hold for the xbox3 rpg? That's like the cherry on the bad luck cake. Things don't look good at all if they're down to just one published project and it's the South Park RPG.